MY dear children have often asked me to write some of the incidents of my youth and of my life, and I attempt to do it in the
belief that they may interest them in years to come.

I have before me at this moment what in the registration system of
our religious society is called my "Birth Note." It is as follows:

On the Sixteenth day of the Eleventh Month, One Thousand Eight Hundred
and Eleven, was born at Green Bank near Rochdale in the Parish of Rochdale in
the County of Lancaster unto Jacob Bright, Cotton Spinner and Martha his wife,
a son who is named John. We who were present at the said Birth, have subscribed
our names as Wit thereof.

James Dunlop.

Margaret Wood Junr.

Esther Wood.

On the back of this note is the following, in the handwriting of my
dear mother: "John was born about 8 o'clock on 7th day evening;" and
then follow these words, and this loving and pious wish: "May he indeed
love his Creator in the days of his youth, and continue steadfast unto
the end."

My dear father was born in Coventry in the year 1775 on the 24th
of August. His father and mother were Jacob and Martha Bright.
He, my grandfather, was in his later days in bad health and in humble

The Memoir, which covers in varying degrees of fullness his first thirty yews,
was written in old age. He began it in 1880, dropped and resumed it several times,
and wrote the last pages, describing the death of his first wife and the beginnings of
his association with Cobden, in 1888, little more than a year before his death. It
fills with his minute script two of the small oblong note-books in which most of his
diaries were entered.

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